Wee Bit Wiser

by Jordan Harbinger

Something wise(-ish)

Here’s something people don’t talk about much.

All growth comes with some degree of shame.

We usually think about growth as an antidote to shame. We believe that learning and evolving are good ways to avoid feeling embarrassed. And in one way, they are.

But over the years I’ve come to appreciate that shame is an essential part of the growth process. It’s not something you necessarily need to avoid.

Shame can actually be a sign that you’re being stretched, that you’re not taking shortcuts to success, that you’re exposing tender parts of your personality.

But a lot of folks (including many “evolved” people) try to dodge that shame however they can. They want knowledge/growth/insight to magically appear in their minds without having to suffer any embarrassment.

Why?

Because it’s hard to live in the gap between who you are and you want to be.

There are two basic ways that people deal with this kind of shame.

The first way is to shrink away from it. Which usually means giving up on the goal or project at hand so that they don’t have to be in touch with this stuff.

The second way is to work very, very hard — to meet this tension with a strong motivation to learn and a killer work ethic. (This tends to be my strategy, by the way.)

Essentially, what people like this end up saying to themselves is: “This shame is awful. I need to know what I don’t know. I need to attain what I don’t have. I need to become the person who knows how to do this thing. And I need to do that so that I don’t have to feel this way anymore.”

In a way, it’s an adaptive strategy. And it can yield good results.

But if you scratch at it a little, you can see how it can also be a way to deny a part of ourselves that we’re deeply uncomfortable with.

So my invitation for you is to invite this feeling into your growth process.

Shame is never fun. I don’t like feeling it either.

But it isn’t fatal. It’s actually meaningful. And anyway, it’s unavoidable.

Once you stop working so hard to shut it down or channel it into achievement, you can begin to appreciate all of the interesting data that embarrassment contains — your true goals, your pressure points, your relationship with achievement, and all the different ways you can develop.

And if you want to know how this idea played out in a listener’s life…

Listen to basically any Feedback Friday episode. This theme shows up in at least one letter every week, and I’m always struck by how many of us struggle to hang in the tension of growth. Especially us high performers, who tend to use our careers and growth to discharge some of our most difficult emotions.

In fact, now I’m wondering if I wrote this newsletter as a way to stave off my own embarrassment this week! Something I’ll be thinking about while I work on a new PR with my trainer. Another achievement oughta do the trick, right? :)

Have you found this principle to be true in your world? Struggling to make use of it?

Hit reply and tell me about it. I’m all ears!

On the show this past week

1173: Atossa Araxia Abrahamian | How Wealth Hacks the World

1174: Brad Meltzer | The Life-Changing Magic of Empathy and Kindness

1175: Text Fight Turns You Into a Villain Overnight | Feedback Friday

1176: Earthing | Skeptical Sunday

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